


Doppelganger

by insistentbass



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 22:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insistentbass/pseuds/insistentbass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't get involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doppelganger

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in over a year. This was done in response to the new episodes & I honestly apologise because there's a lot of brain farting going on. I don't write Sherlock often but I just couldn't help myself after the PAIN of The Sign Of Three. Also longer than I usually attempt. 
> 
> Excuses over -  
> **OBVIOUSLY MASSIVE SERIES 3 SPOILERS**  
> Please don't read this unless you've seen the new stuff. Which I gather most of the world has by now ;)
> 
> As always, no betas or proof readers so if you spot a mistake it's all mine :) x

_What you’re feeling_  
It’s what I’m feeling too  
What you’re made of  
It’s what I’m made of too  
What are you afraid of  
I know that you are  
What are you afraid of  
I know that you are

_Sights - London Grammar_

_\-----_

_Too slow._

He can’t feel the way now either. It’s dark as hell and twice as cold, thin baggy cotton trousers stolen and flapping useless about his legs, making the air drag like treacle. Just one mistake - one - and if he still had his phone maybe he could send Mycroft a few crass words or Google map his way out of this shit, but he doesn’t and maybe this is just the way it has to be, now.

The black of night is seeping through his yellow bruised head, bursting along nerves and internal blood wires like beastly claws. His brain drums out the ones and zeros of a code that belongs in the past, meaningless now as it ever was - it's only purpose the ability to keep him awake at night, when he needs his wits and his eyes open to the dangers that constantly bite at his skin.

He can’t think. Yet he can. But are the thoughts his own or someone else’s? It’s a familiar voice in his head but certainly not his own, carried in the tornado winds brewing up there, faded and re-imagined yet not entirely fictional. It whispers –

_Idiot_

\- as the bullets start and he finally falls to his knees.

 

 

//

 

 

Sherlock spends twelve minutes in the bathroom. It’s plain with a mirror and metal tone walls, and not all that different from one of the many rooms he’s been held in before (held and strangled by fingers of dank air, buzzing with dullness and solitary, save the greying doppelganger in his mind). But he’s not being held, this time. Mycroft’s in the next room, so he breathes. Blinks the memory from his eyes because he’s _here_ now, and his brother can see things that aren’t really there, will push them together leaps and bounds ahead of Sherlock, until he’s left wondering what it is he hasn’t figured out yet.

He wets his hands, bitten and dry from months of different waters, ghosts them over his own face. Feels for bullet holes where they should be but are not, scars and rough skin that has been polished clean, the quality blade shaven freshness of a chin that was hours ago warmed by a tangle of dirt and sweat ridden hairs.

Sherlock stares at himself for the first time in two years. (Is it him?)

Someone says _vain_ , so he toes open the door, tucks in his shirt and becomes Sherlock Holmes again.

 

 

//

 

 

Everything is very alright. Good, even. So he rolls with it. Immerses himself in it. Is mildly disgusted at how poetic it is that two years and three continents can change a man, finds it curious how people - _friends_ \- keep looking at him as if he’s done this really great thing by lying to them all, and keep touching him at every opportunity as if he isn't a constant fixture.

John is happy and looks younger and seems to be coping with Sherlock being ‘not dead’ which is perfect, actually, because he quite prefers being alive now. John and Mary bounce off each other like static electricity, and sometimes if Sherlock stands close enough to them he can feel it crackle over his clothes, shakes himself to force the sparks along his skin and to fizz at the end of his fingers. Pleasant.

It feels calm. Sherlock wonders how long it will stay like this. How he’s become part of this serenity and when he will be removed from it.

 

 

//

 

 

There’s not very much distance between them in this particular moment. Not a lot separates them but a few chords and strings waving invisible through the air. Sherlock watches them dance and caress their clothes, is already several notes ahead and anticipating every gentle peak and dip of sound.

Sherlock guides John with his hands and his slightly too big feet, feels happiness tug at his mouth each time the man loses his count (“One, two, three, John, not onetwothree”) or accidentally knocks the front of his shoes. John gives up once or twice but Sherlock only has to raise an eyebrow and he’s back in his hands, so well trained, and so deliciously predictable in his embarrassment.

Sherlock takes in everything. He doesn’t even have to deduce, it just pours out like neatly written notes on a sheet of music:

John hasn’t danced since his teenage years and never the waltz, he prefers to grip Sherlock’s left rib (with his palm pressed flush and firm) when he should be gripping the right, his body strains to move counter clockwise as if it’s naturally wrong to do so (he’s always worked on time, steady and true), he ignores the subtleties of the music and instead mirrors Sherlock until their breathing syncs, until he’s watching Sherlock’s feet so intensely that Sherlock’s sure his eyes will burst or he’ll at least have to blink soon, and they move together until things around the halo of John’s silvering hair seem to fuzz and extraneous detail becomes just that, irrelevant and dim in the light catching the creases of John’s forehead and the way he contorts his face in so many different ways (Sherlock has a whole bank full of them in his palace, hoards them like precious gold coins) and it’s a bit nice, this, maybe he could just accept it, the way it is, perhaps it could always be like this, except now Sherlock isn’t sure anymore whether they’re going counter or clockwise or backwards, he can’t think again, there’s too much and all that floods him is _closeness closeness close –_

“Jesus, sorry did I catch you again? I can’t seem to...“  
  
The music carries on as if it doesn’t care, and Sherlock doesn’t filter the rest of John’s sentence; is several steps away quite suddenly, squeezing his eyes shut with hands somewhere darting in and out of range, his ribs stinging with the nettle burn of John’s touch. It’s that sensation again like he’s tripping over himself but can’t quite find the height to fall ( _like flying except there’s a more permanent destination_ ) and who is he, right now? There’s something inside trying to burn its way out, like a small stone he’s been carrying for a long, long while that’s suddenly become infinitely heavy.

But everything is good. He’s better and John is better and Mary is more than that, it all gels and works so comfortably. Sherlock can’t understand why that’s not enough. It doesn’t make sense. _Solve it._

“Sherlock”

Then John’s there, hands around Sherlock’s wrists and eyes so twisted with fearful confusion that it splits through the rushing stream of salt water thought in his head, focuses him back to the here and now like John always has. Keeps him true.

_It’s fine, you idiot. Remember?_

“John”

Sherlock’s back straightens and his treacherous limbs snap into functioning how they should. He takes John by the waist and hand without an explanation (he doesn’t need one) and moves them back into the room again in one fluid motion, back to the waltz of reality.

John isn’t counting anymore though, isn’t resisting the not so clockwise motion or breathing how he was before – but he’s watching, he’s watching Sherlock like he can see through him, as if there’s something else glimmering behind him. Just out of reach.

 

 

//

 

 

_I don’t mind._

_I don’t mind._

**_I don’t mind._ **

“I don’t mind” Says John, throwing his hands up in – innocence? – yes, probably. That sounds like John.

Oh and everything is much slower. Damn app isn’t even working because apparently he’s pissed twenty-three times and that isn’t right judging by this. This... Situation. Baker Street should seem blurry and quick as a carnival, bright and buzzing and brilliant. Instead it’s greyed and cold and the only warmth glows from the intoxicated man sitting opposite him.

Come _on_. Scratch that warm glow. Scratch that right out.

It’s infuriating and exciting in equal parts. Because the slow backwards drag of it all means the little things become a lot more apparent. A lot more _there_. Like how John keeps putting his feet just outside of Sherlock’s own thigh. And that knee touch, what about that then? There’s several more of those, and each time Sherlock finds himself purposefully ( _yes_ it is on purpose) slumping down into his chair and trying to focus every thrum of energy on his knee to make it the most sensitive part of his body for some really, really important reason that he’s yet to fully acknowledge.

Somewhere in his head a persistent thought pounds inside a glass box, beating at the walls as if it needs to break out and zoom from his mind into his mouth. It’s something about using advantages, manipulation, all the things he’s been working so hard not to fall back on. People get drunk to discuss things they wouldn’t usually discuss, and maybe he could get everything he’s ever needed to know out of John. He’d gladly sing it from his whisky lips and open himself up like an exotic gift. Except that would be cheating, wouldn’t it? Yes, he decides, yes it would.

The heavy stone in his gut swims in a pool of very bad beer and he doesn’t want to work out what it means, or how it got there, or why it makes him feel sick in middle of the night. Maybe later he can chuck it up and flush it down the toilet. It’s threatening his throat with words and strings of them that he can’t put together correctly, doesn’t quite fathom.

But no. No no no. He has more important things to focus on now. Like definitely not letting John drunk call Lestrudel.

And figuring out who Madonna is.

Sherlock never gets that far though. Some client – _lady, cardigan, cardigan_ – shows up and it turns out that he does actually throw up, but not in the toilet. On a poor unsuspecting carpet.

“Didn’t get any on your shoes though so you’re golden” John winks his congratulations, as the cuffs fasten around his wrists.

During the cab ride ( _police car,_ they find out, when Sherlock tries to pay the driver), John alternates between looking utterly forlorn and giggling silently. When they arrive and get chucked in a cell together they both can’t breathe for several agonising moments, because this has to be in the top ten of most hilarious things ever to happen in the world. John attempts to break out through the barred window by standing on the small singular bed, but he’s too short, and that cripples Sherlock for another good few minutes. After that, Sherlock paces and comes up with thirteen possible ways of escaping. But upon his announcement John looks like he may properly kill him this time, and so they spend the next half an hour sat on the bed, John trying to explain who Madonna is and Sherlock trying to explain why the downfall of humanity is swiftly approaching.

Around fifteen minutes after these revelations Sherlock can feel John getting heavier at his side, and promptly pokes him in the forehead to wake him up.

“’Sup, _oww_.” John protests, rubbing a wound that isn’t there, before pointing an accusatory finger. “Were you asleep?”

Sherlock makes a sound with his lips and air that he hasn’t made possibly ever before, and shakes his head.

“No, _you_ were. I’m intelligent enough to stay awake.”

John pulls back his head and crumples his face as if it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. Which it really isn’t. Sherlock watches as the disgruntled man attempts to turn to face him with as much grace as a goldfish ( _swimming with them_ ) and it takes a couple of times for John to fold his leg up onto the bed, his other planted on the floor.

With expectant eyes John folds his arms a bit more flamboyantly than usual, and Sherlock desperately tries to focus on his own body, where he is and how many millimetres he needs to keep between them. _How many oceans and dead bodies._

“Well, keep me awake then, genius”

Sherlock smirks (he thinks) and shifts a little to mirror John, foot numb and millimetres in the single digits.

“You know my methods John,” He challenges, voice so low and off-kilter that he can’t be sure the words are leaving his tongue. “Keep yourself awake”

John nods, grins the type of grin that stretches his mouth in a strange way, almost sarcastic if Sherlock could decipher such a thing. But then his expression changes and now there’s something else in the room with them, some kind of vibration that stems from deep in John’s throat and rattles the clinging alcohol in Sherlock’s veins. John’s staring through him again - or is it _into_ him? - and Sherlock fears his hidden insides are trickling to his outsides through the pores of his skin.

“But it’s so much better when you do it, Sherlock”

_It’s so much better._

The weight in his gut trembles. The indecipherable rock. The Final Problem, perhaps, and maybe to crack it he needs to first weaken it, a little.

John’s eyes are darker than they ever have been, metallic and tempting.

Those knees again – but this time it’s Sherlock, reaching out first to tap clumsy binary (01001010 01101111 01101000 01101110) against his own knee, before he loses track, fingers slipping forwards and onto denim clad patella that doesn’t belong to him. Tapping gently at first and then moving in some inconsistent pattern, tendons jerking out of control.

John’s eyes flick down and his tongue passes over his bottom lip – _is he nervous?_ – but Sherlock can’t spend too long focusing on that, because he’s trying desperately to get his hand off John’s knee and it isn’t working. Instead the pads of his fingers have ceased movement and are just resting there. Just touching, there. As if somehow it will be the only time.

“You’re touching my knee”

John says, very quietly and for no apparent reason.

“But you don’t mind” Sherlock counters.

For a moment Sherlock fears he’s gone too far, that he’s back in the realm of bit not good and maybe John has a better tolerance to the staggering variety of alcohol in their systems and now isn’t the time to dip his toe into the turbulent waters of what feels right and what is _fair_.

Instead -  
  
“I _did_ say that, didn’t I”

John barely mouths, begins to tap his own fingers atop Sherlock’s poised knuckles, plays them almost like piano keys and the notes resonate along Sherlock’s arm and into his chest. John catches Sherlock’s eyes with his own for a moment, calculating, before dipping them to his musical fingers as if it requires ultimate concentration. 

“You know, it’s funny”

John continues, though Sherlock thinks he doesn’t find any of this funny at all. Tries to shift, maybe to get away or maybe to get closer, isn’t sure it even matters anymore.

“It’s funny, because we’ve never been this _close_ , and yet - and _yet_ you seem to be very far away, sometimes”

It’s more ironic than anything, that John - this seemingly static man who actually pushes in and out of Sherlock like waves - never fails to make him feel as if he knows nothing about himself. It should make him afraid. But it doesn’t, and perhaps that’s the most interesting thing. Perhaps that’s the point he should be focusing on and pulling apart.

“I won’t ever be,”

Sherlock begins, has to bite his bottom lip to check it’s still there, to prevent words spilling out where they have no business being. His eyes dart and follow John’s piano movements, they compose a melody that sings through his brain like the beginnings of a dull headache. Later he’ll take those notes and write them, weave them into the only piece of music he's ever written for someone else, and it will be his own clever secret.

“I won’t ever be far away, again”

John looks up at that, and it’s clear to Sherlock that John can almost see him properly, now. Can see the slowly sharpening picture in his mind that spans two years and thousands of miles and so many seconds that he hasn’t been privy too. That he’s missed. He saw the fall and saw Sherlock break, but in that separate span of time the doppelganger has moved things around. That constant presence, however morphed and skewed and slightly blurry - who still wore oatmeal colours and still had the same smell, still told him things that illuminated dark paths and prepared him for the next blow - is lingering there, somewhere in his palace, wandering around and throwing rocks at everything breakable, feeds a stone deep in his belly that grows each night. It's trying to _sabotage him_ , but Sherlock doesn’t know why. And John, _the real John_ , can see it, as if Sherlock’s been put back together in the blinding dark and now some pieces fit better than they should and others remain misplaced.

Sherlock wonders which kind of piece _they_ are, now.

There’s a moment, or maybe it’s a few, and it feels tense. John looks like he has a thousand things he shouldn’t say, and the soldier in him is battling his way to the forefront, through the haze of beer and the bleak cell walls.

“You should get some sleep, Sherlock”

But he doesn’t mean it - Sherlock can tell, even if he can’t feel his feet he can still tell that John wants the complete opposite of that. Wants something and everything, things Sherlock doesn’t know if he can give but would try to. Oh, he would try.

John flattens his hand over Sherlock’s briefly, digs his nails in a little too hard like he wants to leave something behind. Then he moves, shifts countless millimetres away and throws his back against the wall, slides down and into himself until Sherlock can’t see his face clearly anymore.

“Goodnight, John”

He says, and wishes for all the world that he was sober.

 

 

//

 

 

Don’t get involved.

Too late for that, he thinks, but somehow in translation his acceptance becomes denial. He hangs up on Mycroft feeling as though he’s wilted away, just a bit, cut at the roots. Something in his belly cracks. But between almost-murder and Mary’s cleverness and John being Doctor ( _jealous_ ) he forgets about how much he’s involved and instead enjoys _being_ , and it’s not until half way through his binary code violin tribute that he makes an accidental deduction.

Accidental but not unwelcome. Not entirely.

Not _entirely_ , yet Sherlock finds himself lost for a moment after John takes Mary back to the packed floor, has a sudden urge to follow them all night in his own quick footed dance. It’s not to be, though. Everyone has moved on.

There’s a part of him that wants to scream. The part that’s now standing alone and wondering why, how this has happened after he’s tried so hard and done so well and come so far.

The night is bitter and too warm for May. Sherlock shields himself from it all with the collar of his coat, walks as fast as he can for fear he will turn back. He needs a bloody cigarette. No, no he doesn’t. Everything he needs is in the brightly lit full of life room he’s just left, everything he needs is so secure and at the same time slipping gently away. He can leave now because Mary has John, safe in her arms and her beautiful heart. And the worst thing, the undeniable thing - Sherlock trusts her to keep him.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Sherlock thinks about ignoring it but he's self destructive and almost wants the conflict. He expects some variation of why have you left / where are you going, a bit of anger not so subtly hidden because who leaves a wedding early?

Instead -

_Thank you. I mean it. See you in a fortnight.  
John_

Sherlock turns off his phone without replying and sets off through the village, heavy and with no destination. Thinks of Baker Street, the empty room above his own and the lack of clean teaspoons, the untidiness and takeaways for one, the maddening night-time silence that he’s been trying to shake for weeks. Most of all he thinks of John’s chair. Of his bare feet against the carpet and the way Sherlock would take them into his lap and palm the muscle of his calves if he so had the chance. Of their knees - so close, so warm and inviting and perfectly fine.

Sherlock imagines how many times John has sat in that chair, alone, waiting for his friend to come home.

He wonders how long it will take him to do the same. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
